


Mosaic

by SugarSpiceandCurseWords



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crew as Family, Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8243159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarSpiceandCurseWords/pseuds/SugarSpiceandCurseWords
Summary: It's never quite as easy as it looks.  A series of missing scenes from the end of Star Trek Into Darkness.





	1. Bones

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is _years_ late; it's so late it's entire movie behind. But I'm just now getting up the motivation and courage to post a three-year-old fic. So, um, hi, Star Trek fandom. It's been a while.

Leonard McCoy is not taking any chances.  
  
Okay, that’s wrong. He’s taking one _hell_ of a chance, trying to wring a miracle out of a madman’s blood. If they yank his medical license, then so be it, but Jim is dead—Jesus, he’s _dead_ —and ‘first do no harm’ seems like a matter of semantics in this case.  
  
Where he is _not_ taking any chances is with Khan. Bones triples the standard sedative dose and throws in a muscle relaxant for good measure before withdrawing two full pints of the superhuman bastard’s blood. _Bounce back from that, asshole._ “Get him out of my sickbay,” he snarls at the two security officers flanking the door, turning to the cryotube as they move to comply.  
  
_Prep the sample first, but don’t take too long—the cryofreeze won’t be able to stall the radiation damage entirely. Be ready to inject the instant the cryo-seal is broken, because neurological tissue will deteriorate exponentially faster as it warms, and God only knows how many more brain cells he can afford to lose._  
  
Hypo in hand, Bones steels himself and keys the code into the cryotube’s control pad. As soon as it hisses open, he presses the hypo to his friend’s cold skin and says a silent prayer.  
  
“Okay. Let’s get him hooked up.”  
  
Hands appear, helping him ease Jim’s body out of the tube and onto a diagnostic bed. Monitors are placed, oxygen and IVs readied, all accompanied by a low but insistent alert tone, signaling an utter lack of life signs. Cursing under his breath, Bones slaps at the settings and silences the alert.  
  
And then…there’s nothing, and nothing to be done.  
  
Behind him, Uhura asks, “How long?”  
  
That tears it. “How in blue blazes should I know?” Bones explodes, spinning around. “Does this look like the result of a thoroughly researched medical protocol? It’s one step up from voodoo, for pity’s sake, and I can’t believe I just did it, but he doesn’t have time for me to waffle. His cells are disintegrating, one by one, and right now it’s a horse race to see which works faster, the radiation or that genocidal son of a bitch’s blood. So if you’re looking for a pat on the head and a promise that this is going to work…”  
  
His ire fades when he allows himself to fully see the people before him. Uhura and Spock are two of the coolest customers he knows, and right now both are just barely holding it together. Windblown, sweat-damp, a trickle of jade blood at Spock’s temple, they stand as one motionless unit, as if afraid any movement might destroy the precarious chance they’d fought so hard to give their captain.  
  
“You did good,” Bones manages to say. “If it does work, it’ll be thanks to you two.”  
  
Silence descends again.  
  
_Come on, Jim. If you’re still in there, show us._  
  
“Bridge to sickbay.” Sulu’s voice comes over the intercom. “Starfleet has issued an emergency recall for all available medical personnel to assist with triage efforts at Headquarters. Can we spare anyone?”  
  
The _Vengeance_ crash. He’d almost forgotten. “Is it bad down there?” he asks Spock, already knowing the answer.  
  
Spock’s lips are compressed in a thin line. “Very.”  
  
That just does not bear thinking about. Not now. “Okay, yeah,” Bones tells the bridge, snapping his fingers at M’Benga across the bay. “I can send half a dozen.”  
  
“Have them meet in the transporter room.” Sulu hesitates. “Headquarters also requested a brief report from the captain as soon as possible.”  
  
Bones opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.  
  
Thankfully, Spock steps in. “Convey to Headquarters that Captain Kirk is…unavailable.”  
  
A terrible pause ends only when Sulu forces out a question, his voice weighted by dread. “Sir, there’s a rumor flying all over the ship… about the warp core chamber…”  
  
“His injuries are grave, Mr. Sulu, and his condition is tenuous.” As he speaks, Spock’s gaze rests on Jim’s lifeless form. “If Starfleet is unsatisfied with that response, any additional queries may be directed to me as acting commanding officer.”  
  
“Yes, sir. Bridge out.”  
  
Bones narrows his eyes at the Vulcan. “Don’t you fall on any swords for me, Spock.”  
  
The eyebrow. “I have no desire to fall on anything further today, Doctor.”  
  
“And don’t play coy. As of this moment, Jim Kirk is dead. Not gravely injured, not in a tenuous condition, but dead. Obscuring that fact to the powers that be will only get you in hot water right alongside me if someone decides I played God today.”  
  
Spock, naturally, is unmoved. “I find no fault in the logic of your actions, as is surely clear from my own actions in support. Moreover, I see no benefit to giving Starfleet, or this crew, information that may shortly be invalidated.”  
  
_‘Or this crew.’_ He doesn’t want to tell them their captain is gone. He wants to spare as many as possible, for as long as possible, from the grief the three of them are facing now.  
  
Stunned, Bones can only mutter, “I’ll be damned,” and return to staring fruitlessly at the heart monitor.  
  
After a moment, he hears Uhura say quietly, “I was wrong.”  
  
“In what sense?” Spock replies.  
  
“I accused you of not caring how you make other people feel. But you do.”  
  
“I am… aware.” Spock’s pause is painful. “Perhaps more so now.”  
  
Bones keeps his eyes trained on the monitor, unable to look down at the man in the bed. He’s dragged Jim home falling-down drunk, sneaked him the good drugs when he was laid flat by Rigellian fever, and cleaned him up after more than one fistfight. He knows all the ways Jim can be stilled. This particular stillness is unnatural in every way, and every second that it persists scrapes a new furrow across Leonard McCoy’s soul.  
  
“You should go to the bridge, both of you. You’re a good chunk of the command crew at the moment. Might as well act like it.”  
  
“I mean this in the best possible way,” says Uhura, “but fuck off.”  
  
“I’m just saying, it could take—”  
  
A single beep brings the room to an immediate halt.  
  
For a measureless time, no one knows what to believe. They’d all heard it, Bones is sure from their reactions, so at least it wasn’t in his head. Was it real, or just a glitch of the machine? He circles his fingers around Jim’s wrist—still so cold—waiting for just one more beat.  
  
“Come on, you colossal nutcase,” he breathes. “Come on back.”  
  
Another tortuous silence.  
  
“Please,” Uhura whispers.  
  
When he thinks he’s lost his mind at last, the monitor beeps again, and he feels a weak beat against his finger. Then, eventually, another.  
  
_Christ Almighty, thank you._  
  
As if his own heart had gotten a kickstart, Bones seizes the intubation kit. “Let’s give him some help here, people. Warm him up and start a line. And be gentle, for God’s sake—there’s major tissue damage.”  
  
His hands are steady, activity swirling around him, as he threads the tube down Jim’s throat and hooks up the respirator to aid his ravaged lungs. Brain function is still practically nonexistent, but once blood flow is restored they’ll be able to better assess that. Now the real work—avoiding rejection, and synthesizing a type-matched serum to amplify the curative efforts of the first transfusion—begins.  
  
Somewhere off to the side, Uhura murmurs, “Still convinced there are no such things as miracles?”  
  
Spock’s response is perfectly characteristic, and yet not. “I am, as always, willing to concede that my knowledge of the workings of the universe is not total.”  
  
Bones smothers a hysterical chuckle. “Hear that, kid?” he says to his patient. “You stumped him. Again.”  
  
No longer just a body, but a patient. This he can handle.


	2. Crew

It takes five hours for the first signs of brain activity to register, and another thirteen before James Kirk takes the first unassisted breath of his new life. During those hours, various crewmembers float through sickbay, hovering just long enough to assure themselves that their captain lives before being hustled out by the med staff. Some visitors are given more consideration than others. When Montgomery Scott stands in a corner of the room for twenty-five minutes on the overnight shift, a haunted expression visible through the dimmed lights and the swelling that has overtaken his jaw, no one bothers him.  
  
Carol Marcus is discharged on the third day. She doggedly maneuvers her crutches over to the intensive care area, struggling to avoid all the equipment until a nurse brings over a chair. She lingers for a few minutes, eyes red and bright, unsure where to go from here.  
  
The fourth day is the low point, in all ways. Khan’s blood has healed the worst of the organ damage, but radiation toxicity doesn’t play well with anti-rejection drugs, and Kirk’s immune system is the pawn. Pavel Chekov stops by at exactly the wrong moment, standing horrified in the doorway as McCoy calls for sedatives and Spock pins the captain’s thrashing shoulders to the bed. Bruises spring up almost instantly to mottle Kirk’s skin wherever he receives even the slightest touch. For a few moments, his eyes are open and unseeing, and even though Pavel knows better it looks like he’s dying. Febrile seizure, the doctor labels it, but Pavel intends to forget the name and everything else about it at the first opportunity. He’s not entirely comfortable with his own mortality in the best of times, so if it is in fact possible for this man, of all people, to die, he’s quite certain he’d be better off not knowing.  
  
The _Enterprise_ is stabilized enough to bring into drydock on day five, and the crew is released on leave. Almost no one disembarks before the captain’s gurney is eased out of sickbay and through the corridors to the transporter room. McCoy grumbles about not being a goddamn circus sideshow as people crowd the passageways of their route. “They care about him, too,” Uhura reminds him. “You can’t deny them the chance to pay their respects.”  
  
“Jim would _hate_ being seen like this.”  
  
“I’m not planning on telling him.”  
  
Starfleet Medical has never been so busy in its decades-long existence. The crash of the _Vengeance_ has torn a gash through San Francisco that will bleed for months, even years. Thirteen buildings, most of them part of Starfleet Headquarters or the Academy, have been utterly destroyed. After nearly a week, official rescue efforts have given way to recovery. All but the most critical injury cases have been healed and discharged, leaving the medical center still close to capacity.  
  
The morgue is far worse.  
  
“The city’s eerie as hell,” Hikaru Sulu tells his captain on day eight, perching on a countertop because McCoy’s fallen asleep in the room’s only chair. “My parents’ neighborhood—usually there are lots of people outside, on the streets, in the park. Right now everybody’s just staying in, staying quiet. And, uh, the ship needs a ton of work. Scotty just about burst a blood vessel when they gave him the repair schedule, so he’s probably going to end up trying to do most of the work himself until he finally snaps.” Hikaru stands up. “What I’m saying, sir, is that you’re not missing much. All the same, we’d appreciate it if you’d wake up and live through it with us.”  
  
No one is quite sure if it’s coincidence, but the neuroimagery taken three hours later shows an uptick in brain activity.  
  
“I’m actually here at Spock’s request,” Nyota Uhura says on day ten, settling into the bedside chair. “He got dragged into a ‘strategic vectoring’ meeting at Headquarters. I think it’s scheduled for two full days. You’re lucky to be unconscious.”  
  
She folds her legs up and notes that the captain’s color is better; his skin no longer looks paper-thin and aged. She’ll tell Pavel. “Also, I think Spock likes to confirm once in a while that I don’t hate you. And you _know_ I don’t. I do wish you hadn’t slept with half my friends—three of whom wanted me to get them in here to see you, by the way. I don’t know how you do that. Maybe it’s related to the way you make the crew want to follow you to hell and back…so to speak. Because we would, you know. And we would have a couple of weeks ago, too. But now that you’ve gone into an _active warp core chamber_ for us?” She shakes her head. “That’s the stuff legends are made of.”  
  
Slipping her hand into his, Nyota hums a song remembered from childhood. After a few minutes, she is rewarded by the barest hint of pressure from his fingers. She straightens instantly, but there is nothing further.  
  
It takes another two days and change. At first, it’s a low, wordless moan that brings Bones barreling in. Then, later, Jim’s eyes move behind closed lids, as if dreaming. Eventually those eyes open, for a moment, and come close to focusing before sliding closed again.  
  
“Enough is enough, you lazy prick,” Bones growls. “The last guy to pull off a stunt like this only needed _three_ days.”  
  
He just needs to hear Jim speak. That’s it. Once he has that, he can trust the gadgets and gizmos that claim normal brain function. They have every other piece of this miracle assembled, but the human mind is a tricky thing and those machines aren’t infallible and every passing day deepens his gnawing fear that Jim is _here,_ but he’s no longer James T. Kirk.  
  
This time the eyes seem to lock in. Bones leans on the bedrail, his chest beginning to ache from the unrelenting tension. “Jim?” he asks yet again. “C’mon, kid, you with us?”  
  
Jim blinks. “Look…bad, Bones.”  
  
And that is goddamned poetry.  
  
“I wouldn’t throw stones if I were you,” Bones shoots back, grinning.  
  
Jim coughs weakly, his brow creasing. “Alive?”  
  
“You surely are, and going to stay that way.”  
  
“Huh.”  
  
He fades back into sleep then—but it’s enough. Bones makes a note on his padd, squares his shoulders, and heads for his on-call cubicle three floors down. When the door hisses shut behind him, he locks it, slowly slides down the wall, and weeps.


	3. Jim

He feels good, all things considered. He’s on some meds—okay, probably a lot of meds—and leaving the room, let alone the building, sounds more like a theoretical concept than a practical one. Bones is dialing the drugs back, though. For a while Jim had had only a clinical, academic recollection of how he’d ended up in Medical, but being able to stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time has done wonders for his memory. Sense memory especially, which isn’t exactly a positive development. He now knows what it feels like to burn from the inside out and to be powerless to do the first thing about it. He watched his own life end, in the shattered expressions of his friends; and it is, in all ways, an experience no one should have to live with.  
  
For all that, though, he’s here, in one piece, and there’s even sunlight glittering off the skyline outside his window. If he has to be planetbound for a while, there are worse places to be than San Francisco.  
  
“When am I getting out of here?” he asks Bones, mostly for the hell of it, reaching for a pudding cup on his dinner tray.  
  
The doctor snorts. “Not for a long damn time. Even once you’re strong enough, which is a joke at the moment, you’re a case study. No one’s completely clear on the mechanisms by which your super-transfusion worked. You’ve got much more to do in the name of science.”  
  
“Fantastic.” A thought occurs to Jim. “Hey, you’re not in trouble for what you did for me, right? I mean, you know how I get along with rules in general, but doctors have _rules_ rules.”  
  
Bones’s mouth curls wryly. “Yeah, I could probably do without any more of your good influence in that department. But no, the board let me off the hook. The consensus is that I sure as hell wasn’t harming you, and no one’s too concerned about an anemic Khan-sicle. They’re not letting any further blood samples out, though. The trail you’re blazing is ethically borderline.”  
  
Jim doesn’t care to spend much brainpower on whether or not he ‘should’ be alive right now. There aren’t any answers there, at least none that’d do him any good. “As long as they’ll let us both go back to the _Enterprise_.” And that’s another thought he hasn’t had the time or energy to process. He sits up straighter, jostling the meal tray. “We have a ship to go back to, right? They’re not scrapping her?”  
  
“She’ll be fine. Scotty’s not going to get any sleep for a couple of months because he thinks the refit techs are trained chimps, but the ship will keep flying. And if anybody tried to yank you off her, I think the crew might just stage a revolt. Nobody’d try, though. At this point, the symbolism alone is worth something, after everything that’s happened…”  
  
Relaxing, Jim realizes belatedly that Bones has stopped talking and made himself busy with a monitor. Too busy, considering nothing’s beeping. Jim’s never thought of himself as particularly good at reading people, but even under the fuzzy weight of meds and fatigue he can tell his friend wants to avoid something.  
  
And with a cold stab, he knows what it is. “How many, Bones?” he asks quietly. “How many did we lose?”  
  
It’s a question he’s never had to ask before, and it’s awful.  
  
Bones’s cageyness wavers, but he doesn’t meet Jim’s gaze. “On the _Enterprise?_ Only a few.”  
  
“What does ‘only a few’ mean? Five? Ten? Twenty?” He’s starting to sound a little unhinged and is surprised by how little he cares. “Jesus, Bones, _please_ stop me before I get any higher.”  
  
“Thirty-six, all right? Breathe for a minute.” Bones takes a seat on the edge of the bed. “There were a ton of injuries, some of them bad. But we lost thirty-six.”  
  
Jim shuts his eyes: he hears the beginnings of pity and right now it’s unbearable. “I need names.”  
  
“Spock’s taken care of the family notifications.”  
  
“Spock _can’t_ take care of the family notifications. He can offer Starfleet’s formal condolences, but he can’t tell them he’s sorry—not because he’s Spock but because it _wasn’t his fault_.”  
  
“Jim, we were under attack, for God’s sake, and you weren’t the only one making command decisions.”  
  
“Give me the _names,_ Bones.”  
  
“I don’t know them all. Parker and Chao from Engineering. Friedler from Weapons. Mishke and Lemontier from Astrobio. And Galliano from, um—”  
  
“Security.” Jim knows their names, faces, and duties. It would be a lie to say he knew any of them much beyond that. They were bound to him now, though, the human cost of his choices and actions.  
  
“It would have been a much longer list if you hadn’t gotten it into your head to nuke yourself,” Bones reminds him. “Thirty-six is a blessing. It’s what passes for good news these days.”  
  
“The hell it does.” The very idea feels wrong. After a moment, Bones’s earlier words come back to him. “You said ‘only a few’ on the _Enterprise._ ”  
  
When he looks up, Bones has gone evasive again. “There were other casualties in this royal snafu. At the Kelvin Archive and at Daystrom. You knew that.”  
  
And Jim hadn’t thought of Admiral Pike since he woke up, which just keeps the good times rolling. If anyone deserved resurrection, it was Christopher Pike, not his wayward protégé. “That’s not what you’re talking about, though,” he guesses. “You’re a lousy poker player, Bones. What’s going on?”  
  
After a second’s hesitation, Bones’s features harden, and he stands up. “You know what? No. I’m not doing this. Not today. I just put you back together, goddammit. Was it too much to ask that we just enjoy you being alive for a whole blasted day? Do we have to jump right into the gory details of reality? Could you possibly just watch a bad movie and flirt with the next nurse through the door and eat some damn pudding? As a favor to me?”  
  
Jim closes his mouth, at a loss.  
  
Now that he really sees it, Bones looks haggard, worn out. Jim often forgets that Leonard McCoy has almost ten years on him, had a career and family before ever signing on as a Starfleet officer or as Jim’s unofficial guardian angel. Bones has seen and done and fought for lives and sometimes lost. This time was unquestionably hard; it was a friend, and for two long weeks it must have taken just about all he had. And Jim had slept through the whole thing. He can’t make that up to Bones, can’t even come close. All he can do is this.  
  
So even as a sick feeling settles in his stomach, the unspecified awareness that something wicked this way comes, Jim takes a deliberate bite of his pudding and makes a show of grimacing. “Is this _banana?_ Why does nobody make banana pudding _yellow_ so I don’t get my hopes up for vanilla? Gimme my padd so I can reprogram the replicator.”  
  
Bones’s eyes roll skyward, but some of the tension in his shoulders eases. “You’re an ungrateful infant and I ought to tell the nutritional staff that you’re restricted from sugar.”  
  
“You wouldn’t.”  
  
“Don’t test me.”  
  
The next nurse through the door turns out to be a grandmotherly type. Jim turns on as much charm as he can muster anyway, for Bones’s sake, even though he feels maddeningly wiped out already. It’s enough, apparently, because Bones grumbles something about having seen this show before and heads for the door. “Leaving so soon, Bones?”  
  
“I need a shower and food. You. Sleep.”  
  
And Jim tries. It’s just so _quiet,_ though—the medical equipment doesn’t produce nearly as much noise as the ship does, which just keeps nudging at his mind. _She’s broken, she’s wounded, you saved her but you put her in danger in the first place._ Deeper still is another voice, one that sounds unnervingly like Khan: _I merely set the board. You put the pieces in play._  
  
He tries to watch a holovid on the room’s screen, flipping idly through the channels. It takes him a few minutes to comprehend that he’s only cycling through a handful of options over and over. Someone’s locked out the news channels. _Well played, Bones._  
  
The creeping sense of _not-right-not-right-not-right_ doesn’t abate, and he’s never been known for patience. Noticing his padd on the table, he checks its connectivity. Again, no wider network access. But his direct contacts are accessible. He taps out a message.  
  
_YOU BUSY? I NEED ANSWERS._  
  
Spock’s reply takes only moments to arrive, and that single line of text loosens something in Jim’s chest. _I AM AVAILABLE._  
  
_GOOD. COME ON OVER._  
  
_AS YOU WISH, CAPTAIN. ETA TWELVE MINUTES._  
  
Jim does his damnedest to endure the wait. But at some point he starts to worry that Bones’ll show up and chase Spock off. The room is so empty and white and still, and he knows he shouldn’t have any memory of being in a cryotube, but the sense of deprivation feels familiar in the worst way.  
  
The only med-monitors he’s wearing at the moment are wireless. If he can just get out into the hallway for a little while, maybe he won’t feel so smothered.  
  
His body wastes no time in reminding him that he hasn’t been on his feet in a fortnight. Everything’s wobbly and uncoordinated, but he’s able to scuff his way to the door and look out into a deserted hallway. There’s a padded bench at the intersection of two corridors that has his name on it. It’s a good thirty yards away, which might be pushing his luck, but it faces west, and watching the sun set over the Golden Gate sounds about as inviting as anything at the moment.  
  
Grasping the brushed-metal ledge that runs along the wall, he puts one cautious foot in front of the other until he reaches the corner. Victory. He smiles a little, looking up from his slippers to—  
  
The view hits him as if it were a bullet. He stares at the ruined cityscape below, his brain flailing to put what he sees into some kind of sensible context. It doesn’t even look real—but of course it has to be, because surely this is what his dear friend didn’t want him to see.  
  
The west campus of Starfleet Headquarters is _gone._ Crushed into unrecognizable bits of metal and glass and stone and showered across the buildings that remain standing. There are work crews scattered around the periphery of the crater, sorting and carting away debris. In the distance, pinprick laser beams slice away at a battered engine nacelle, one that Jim had last seen bearing down on his ship at close range.  
  
He inhales sharply, catching himself on the window glass, as clarity strikes.  
  
The _Vengeance._ Khan didn’t just attack Starfleet Command. He decimated a city.  
  
And the _Enterprise_ and her captain hadn’t been able to stop it—might even have made it possible.  
  
The scope of the devastation is so vast, he almost can’t take it in. His legs are trembling with exertion, but he can’t tear himself away, because those buildings were full of _people,_ so very many people, and they’re gone too—they’re dust and fragments, indistinguishable from the rest of the rubble. It’s heartbreaking, maybe literally; his chest constricts painfully and he struggles to pull enough air into his lungs—  
  
Hands close firmly around his shoulders, taking his weight just as he begins to falter. He clutches at Spock’s arms as his first officer eases him down onto the bench. Thank God for Spock. If anyone can make sense of this, it’s him.  
  
“I will infer that your decision to leave your room was not discussed with Dr. McCoy.”  
  
Jim hears his own breath coming in shuddery gasps, and part of him is embarrassed that his fumbling fingers can’t seem to let go of Spock’s sleeves. Then he remembers confessing his dying fears and figures that ship has sailed.  
  
“My God,” he breathes, over and over, finally releasing his friend and slumping over to drop his head into his hands. “My God, Spock.”  
  
Spock straightens gracefully to stand. “If benevolent deities exist, surely none of them was the architect of this.”  
  
“How many?”  
  
“A large number of injured were saved by the rapid actions of transporter crews such as our own.” But they both know that isn’t an answer. “An exact death toll has not yet been released.”  
  
“Ballpark it.” Wait, Spock won’t get that idiom. “Estimate.”  
  
There is a pause. “Thousands.”  
  
“Did we—we led him back here, we…” Jim can’t finish the thought.  
  
“I have considered our role at length—often from this very building.” Spock takes a seat beside him on the bench, his posture characteristically straight. “I believe we bear a portion of responsibility. With that said, I have also pondered upon our interactions with Khan and researched historical records on the Eugenics Period that produced him. I have concluded that a result of this nature—or worse—was Khan’s goal, and he had the acumen to carry it out regardless of circumstantial detail. Whether he achieved it here and now rather than weeks or months from now is only relevant at an individual level.”  
  
It sounds cold, and yet Jim knows it isn’t. No one who has watched the obliteration of his homeworld can be accused of being insensitive to mass casualties. “How are we supposed to live with that? I thought I knew what consequences were, but I’m not sure I ever really believed something like this was possible. And even this is nothing compared to Vulcan… The galaxy wasn’t _like_ this when I signed up, was it?”  
  
Spock is silent for a moment. “As long as the galaxy has had sentient beings, there has been war, and there have been those who seek to move beyond it. Only the reach, and thus the magnitude, has changed.”  
  
He’s right, and yet Jim can’t quite wrap his head around it all. The painkillers and anti-rejection drugs and whatever else probably aren’t helping. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he says, only dimly aware that it’s a non-sequitur. “The only thing that _didn’t_ scare the living hell out of me in that warp core… I thought I was going to become my father, once and for all, and I figured there were worse things to be.”  
  
“Indeed.”  
  
“Except I didn’t. Instead, I’m here, and the blood that’s making that possible is the same blood that made Khan…” Running out of words, he gestures hopelessly at the window.  
  
“Physiology and genetics alone do not dictate—” Spock begins.  
  
“I know. But it still creeps me out, just the same.” Jim draws his arms tighter around his body, feeling the slight tremble of disused muscles. “I should know this, but I’m a little fried right now—do Vulcans believe in souls?”  
  
“In similar proportion to humans, I expect.” Spock’s gaze remains level, trained on the ravaged horizon. “The Vulcan equivalent is the _katra_ ; the sum of essential elements that make an individual unique. Such elements are metaphysical and do not include the chemical or biological properties of cells and blood.”  
  
“Good.” He tries to chuckle, but it comes out ragged and harsh. “Then again, my katra may not have been doing the universe any favors even before Khan got involved.”  
  
Spock angles his head, turning to look at him. He takes a moment before replying. “Forgive me. I am unaccustomed to you lacking confidence. I confess I do not know the proper response.”  
  
“That’s okay. I’m sure you’re not alone on that front.” Jim shrugs halfheartedly. The explanation feels weak even before he attempts it, but it’s all he’s got. “There’s this poem Admiral Pike used to quote at me every time I asked how he was feeling after the _Narada._ ‘It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.’”  
  
“Henley, _Invictus._ ” Of course Spock would know it.  
  
“He never doubted he’d be able to get back out there. He never doubted that I would, either. He said if anyone was the master of his own fate, it was me. Usually he even meant it as a compliment.” Jim can’t bear the thought that his grief for Christopher Pike helped set the wheels of terror in motion, but neither can he avoid it. “He was right. I can handle being the master of _my_ fate; I probably wouldn’t accept anything less. It’s being the master of all these _other_ fates that’s tripping me up. I thought I could deal with it. I knew we could lose people, especially after last year, but we were on such a lucky streak…and maybe luck is all it was. It’s not like I thought command would be easy. It’s just…”  
  
“Discovering something that does not come easily to you is outside your frame of reference.”  
  
“Well... _yeah._ We’re—you and I, we’re supposed to stand on the bridge of a starship and make decisions every day, knowing that some of them could lead to _this?_ ”  
  
“Someone must,” observes his first officer. “It would be prudent for a person with commensurate intelligence and judgment to assume the role.”  
  
Somehow that’s funny, in a sick sort of way, and Jim swallows a bubble of hysteria. “So help me, Spock, if you’re fucking with me right now—”  
  
“I lack the ability and certainly the desire to do so.” Spock’s gaze is heavy, probing, and just as he’s about to continue he suddenly changes course, looking about as concerned as he gets. “Perhaps we should return to your room, Captain. Your pallor and breathing are—“  
  
“Just say what you were going to say, Spock.” Jim needs to hear it, whatever it is.  
  
Spock gives a single nod. “As we cannot be sure of all possible repercussions of our actions, we can only make choices based on the information available to us. You and I have both done as much, and, while our dissimilar experiences and strengths often lead us to dissimilar judgments, I have come to believe that the balance we endeavor to strike between them is, in itself, a strength.”  
  
It’s probably the highest compliment Jim has ever been paid, and he seizes it as a lifeline. His vision is starting to tunnel, but he has to ask. So much has been lost, so much faith shattered—if he can just keep Spock’s, then maybe…  
  
“So—if they give her back to me—you’ll be there?”  
  
It doesn’t occur to him to identify ‘her.’ Spock comprehends, regarding him solemnly. “If I am, as you say, the master of my fate, I would not be elsewhere.”  
  
The depth of Jim’s relief is immeasurable. His whole body slumps, and he realizes belatedly that he won’t be able to catch himself. Of course, his friend is there.  
  
“Please don’t tell Bones,” he manages before the grey smothers him.  
  
He drifts for a while. In a manner that is becoming irritatingly familiar, he regains awareness of his surroundings: back in bed, with sunset sharpening the shadows of an unmarred skyline. Khan’s destruction is not visible from here, even if it’s seared in Jim’s memory.  
  
Bones isn’t waiting there to read him the riot act, so Spock must have gotten him back to his room without alerting anyone. He’s grateful. Mortified, but grateful.  
  
_What now? How do I start to live with this?_  
  
His padd is on the bedside table, its placement so neatly aligned with the table’s edges that it has to have been moved since he tossed it aside earlier. Intrigued, he picks it up and activates it.  
  
A historical record is open on the screen—early 20th century—tagged with a note. _[I MAKE NO DETERMINATIONS AS TO THE EMPIRICAL VALIDITY OF THIS STATEMENT. I MERELY BRING IT TO YOUR ATTENTION AS A DATA POINT FROM A LEADER IN YOUR CULTURE.]_  
  
_“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”_  
  
“Are you still awake, or just awake again? Because I—” Bones pulls up short upon entering the room, and his expression falls to pieces. “Damn it,” he curses softly, and Jim begins to realize that his face is wet. “You found out.”  
  
“Yeah,” Jim confesses, his voice rough.  
  
Bones sits heavily on the bedside chair. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. I just wanted a little—Jesus, Jim, you’re literally healing from death itself. You could use all the help you can get, and this is about the farthest thing from help I can think of.”  
  
“It’s okay.” It isn’t, but Jim’s starting to believe it might be someday. “I was just thinking—I have really great friends, and a really great crew, and the fact that they’re one and the same…I’m not sure I’ve done nearly enough to earn that, but from here on out I swear I’m going to try.”  
  
Bones closes his eyes for a few seconds. “Welcome back, Jim,” he manages to say. “We missed you.”


	4. Pavel

The room is terrifying. There’s no other word for it. Technically, it’s an Academy lecture hall, but for the past three days it’s been a courtroom because the legal building was on the periphery of the _Vengeance_ crash and the civil engineers haven’t cleared it for normal operations yet. There are three rows of carefully-selected media representatives, eight more for Starfleet personnel who wish to observe, and then, on the dais, the five admirals who will pass judgment on the officers of Section 31 and the USS _Enterprise_.  
  
Pavel Chekov stands at the podium, feeling the eyes of the audience on his back. He knows that Spock, Sulu, and Uhura are out there somewhere in the seats; he’s the last to testify, except for the captain, and Scotty’s already gone back to the drydock to oversee the next phase of ship repairs. Pavel is immensely glad his crewmates are with him, but he wishes they were _really_ with him.  
  
His voice is not as steady as he’d like as he answers the tribunal’s questions about the warp core malfunction, the torpedoes, and the battle damage wrought by the _Vengeance_. Perhaps that’s not all bad, because no one is interrogating him quite as harshly as he’d feared. Rationally he knows that he did the best he could and that even Scotty would have been hard-pressed to heal the ship much faster or better—but these are difficult times in which to think rationally.  
  
And then Admiral Nogura starts to pull at a thread that just might unravel it all.  
  
“Ensign, did you have any hesitation when Captain Kirk ordered you to take over Engineering?”  
  
_Are you joking?_ “I was…concerned, sir, that I would not be equal to the task. But the captain expressed his confidence in me, and I did not have time for much further worry.”  
  
“He expressed his confidence,” Nogura repeated. “Did that surprise you at all? That Captain Kirk chose to move a _very_ junior officer from the Command track into the position of chief engineer when he had half a dozen journeyman Engineering personnel available to him?”  
  
Pavel tries not to flinch. “Not at the time, sir.”  
  
“But you agree it looks strange in hindsight,” the old man pressed, sitting forward in his chair. “Knowing what you know now about the reason for Lieutenant Commander Scott’s resignation, do you still believe Captain Kirk selected you solely based on your skills? Or is it possible he took advantage of your inexperience and naiveté to ensure that his decision to bring the experimental torpedoes on board the _Enterprise_ would not be further examined?”  
  
Murmurs filter through the crowd, adding to the chaos of Pavel’s thoughts. He’s thought about this many times over the past five weeks, never developing a good answer. He’s only visited the captain in Medical a couple of times, always with Hikaru, and it’s probably because this is hanging over him. Does the captain believe in him? Did he ever? Or are the admirals and the devil on Pavel’s shoulder right? He wants desperately to believe it’s the first option. Anything else and Captain Kirk isn’t the man Pavel thought he was, and after everything else that’s happened, learning that might just be one more blow than he can take.  
  
He has to say something here. “Starfleet Command gave us assurances about the weapons,” he begins, rapidly running out of words. He can damn the captain or he can damn Scotty, and there doesn’t seem to be any in-between.  
  
“Assurances that the ship’s chief engineer found inadequate,” Admiral Misulak points out, “assurances that did not meet the regulatory requirements for classified technology transfer. You cannot be expected to know all these regulations, Ensign, but I guarantee your captain knows them and disregarded them. Does it not seem probable that you were chosen to sign for the torpedoes primarily because you were the person least likely to refuse?”  
  
“He shouldn’t have to answer that,” says a voice from the side of the room. “You should be asking me.”  
  
When the murmurs overwhelm the room’s adjustable acoustics, Pavel figures it’s safe to turn away from the dais to look.  
  
James Kirk stands in the doorway, impeccable in Starfleet formal gray. He would look every inch the starship captain, larger than life, were it not for the little details: the way his uniform hangs just a bit too big, the way Dr. McCoy hovers only a step behind his elbow.  
  
“We intend to, Captain Kirk,” Misulak replies acidly, “at the appointed time, which is not for another forty minutes. Do you really want to begin answering for a pattern of rule-breaking by breaking another rule?”  
  
“I apologize for the lapse in protocol, sirs and ma’am.” And Kirk does sound repentant, or at least more so than usual. Pavel can’t tell, though, if his careful posture and measured steps are a sign of humility or of lingering infirmity. “But you’re asking the right questions of the wrong person. I can save you some time, and I believe I have the right to defend my crew.”  
  
“Ensign Chekov’s actions are not at issue here,” Nogura says.  
  
“Maybe not, but you just called him naïve and suggested I used him to further my personal agenda. I’ll take that, but he shouldn’t have to.” Kirk moves to stand beside Pavel at the podium, unflinching under the gazes of his superiors, as McCoy fades into the background. “I acted in the moment. I do that a lot. And I have a lot to answer for because of it. I’m not going to hide from that today. The truth is, I chose Ensign Chekov because I knew he could do the job, and in the sense that I considered the torpedoes at all, I think I told myself that he would agree with me. It didn’t consciously occur to me that he might just obey me rather than trust me—and I don’t even know if there was a difference at the time that it would have mattered. But I recognize now that I put him, and others, in an untenable position.” Kirk turns to his navigator, and all Pavel’s doubts dissipate into the air. “I hope you can forgive me for that, and I hope you realize what an incredible job you did out there. You saved the ship, Pavel.”  
  
Pavel half forgets there’s an audience. “N-no, sir,” he protests. “ _You_ did.”  
  
“You got us moving again when the _Vengeance_ was bearing down. You got to the emergency override when the warp core was misaligned. And in between, you kept me and Scotty from falling three hundred feet. Without you the _Enterprise_ breaks up in the atmosphere and hits the Pacific at terminal velocity. That’s all there is to it.”  
  
Pavel has no response. He’s relived every minute of it six times and never put it together quite like that.  
  
Misulak’s voice startles him back to the hearing. “At the risk of encouraging further excursions from order and discipline, if none of my colleagues has any additional questions for this officer…” The other admirals shake their heads. “Ensign Chekov, you are commended for your performance, and you are dismissed. The tribunal calls James T. Kirk, captain, USS _Enterprise_.”  
  
Pavel escapes to the aisle, spotting a seat open between Sulu and Uhura in the gallery. “You did fine,” Hikaru tells him quietly as he slides into it. “Brutal, huh?”  
  
“Unbearable,” he agrees. “I can’t believe the captain just walked in—how did he—?”  
  
Wordlessly, Uhura passes him her mini-padd, and he reads the text exchange on the screen.  
  
_[NUhura]: I sure hope you didn’t actually use Chekov the way Nogura thinks you did._  
  
_[JKirk]: Is that what they’re saying?_  
  
_Shit. Hang tight. I’m only a couple of minutes out._  
  
_[NUhura]: And what, you’re just going to waltz in and tell the most senior officers in the Fleet that they’re full of it?_  
  
_[JKirk]: Did you expect me to wake up a completely different person?_  
  
_[NUhura]: God, I need a drink and something to hide under._  
  
“Captain Kirk,” says Admiral Garrison, “your actions to defend your ship and remove the threats posed by both Commander Harrison and Admiral Marcus have been well documented by your senior crew and are not in question. Starfleet commends your ingenuity and courage, and we wish you well in your continued recovery.”  
  
Pavel knows he’s not the only one to hear the “but” coming.  
  
“It is the original mission to apprehend—or neutralize—Harrison that is our main focus today. Did you believe Admiral Marcus’s order to pursue Harrison to Qo’nos was lawful?”  
  
“No, sir.” Kirk’s response, given without hesitation, seems to catch the entire room off-guard. “Not even in the very instant he gave it. And I would like to be able to tell you that it was always my intention to bring Harrison back alive for trial, but that would be a lie. It took the more reasoned perspective of my first officer to convince me to refocus our mission toward apprehending the fugitive. I wanted revenge, Admiral, plain and simple. A month ago I sat in a room two blocks from here and learned of a savage, cold-blooded attack—and then lived through another one.” His piercing eyes, visible to the gallery on two large holo-screens positioned in the corners of the hall, hold the gazes of the admirals. “Some of you lived through it with me. Some of our very best minds and closest friends and mentors did not. I wanted nothing more than to end that chain of horror, and if that meant ending Harrison, then so much the better. That’s not the honorable response, but I challenge any of you who were in that room with me to call it an incomprehensible one.”  
  
“As may be,” allows Misulak. “However, only one of us who was in that room took off for the Klingon homeworld with untested weapons and a mandate for preemptive strike.”  
  
Kirk bows his head for a moment, acknowledging the point. “I played into Marcus’s hands. I asked for the chance to go after Harrison—and Marcus gave me a ship, weapons, and what I believed to be the approval of my command, lawful or not. I trusted my leadership, the way my crew trusted mine. Obviously we both showed our weaknesses all too clearly.”  
  
“Admiral Marcus’s crimes are undisputed.” Nogura steeples his fingers. “And I can accept your justification up to a point. But your claim that you ‘trusted your leadership’ rings more than a little hollow when we take into consideration the numerous other times you have done precisely the opposite. Only days before the events in question, your command and rank were stripped following a grave violation of regulations on the planet Nibiru—”  
  
“Excuse me, _sir_.” Kirk’s voice takes on a dangerous edge. “Faith in regulations is not the same as faith in leadership. If the Federation wanted its ships to do nothing more or less than follow prescribed rules at every turn, it should have equipped them with AIs and sent them off unmanned.”  
  
Next to Pavel, Uhura gives a low curse under her breath. Some detached part of his brain, the part that isn’t terrified that his captain’s about to get tossed out on his ass, appreciates that she chose a Russian one.  
  
“Yes, I violated the Prime Directive on Nibiru, and if faced with the same situation tomorrow, I’d do it again. I could not, and never could, stand by and allow the death of a good person if there was something I could do to prevent it. So if that’s your sole criteria for fitness to command, then take my commission and we can be done. But let me say this first. What I regret from Nibiru had nothing to do with the Prime Directive and everything to do with the risks I accepted—not for myself, but on behalf of my entire crew. I didn’t appreciate the magnitude of that risk at the time. I should have, given all that’s happened in this fleet over the past year. After Harrison and Marcus, I understand it very well.”  
  
“And do you suggest we simply take you at your word that these events have altered your outlook, Captain?” asks Nogura, sounding as disdainful as decorum might permit.  
  
“I don’t know if I can explain well enough, but I’ll try. You’re aware that I hacked the _Kobayashi Maru_ simulation during my final year at the Academy. I did so because I objected to the principle of the exercise. I didn’t believe in the no-win scenario, so I took it out of the equation.” Kirk shakes his head, a humorless twist to his lips. “It took over a year for the _Kobayashi Maru_ to catch up with me, but I get it now. It’s not so much that there are situations in which winning is impossible. It’s that ‘winning’ sometimes looks like this.”  
  
His gaze slides off to the side, directed at something unseen by Pavel. “The _Enterprise_ barely got through this last mission, and she’s not here just because I beat her warp core back into operation. She’s still here because of her crew. We know what people say about us, good and bad. We were a group of kids, and a year ago we were thrown out there into something no one expected. And we survived, and kept on surviving. Maybe I thought that meant I’d accomplished something special. But I realize now that it wasn’t me. It was all of us together. Any success we’ve had has been a credit to their skills and courage, and when we’ve failed it’s usually been because I didn’t listen well enough to them. That ends now.”  
  
He leans forward on the podium. “By treating the _Enterprise_ and its officers as if we were all invincible, I trivialized their bravery, their sacrifices. They, and you, have my solemn promise that I will never do so again. Don’t send us back out there because of me. Send us out there because of them.”  
  
For a long moment, there is only silence.  
  
At last, Misulak speaks, his features carved in stone. “We appreciate your candor, Captain. The board will now continue in closed-door session to assemble our report. We reserve the right to contact you for further questioning. You are dismissed.”  
  
Kirk moves toward the door through which he entered, McCoy once again at his shoulder. Spock rises from his seat beside Uhura and closes the distance with purposeful strides. As the crowd files out through the rear doors of the hall, Pavel stands with Uhura and Hikaru, dazed and uncertain.  
  
Uhura makes the decision for all of them, heading in the direction of their crewmates. “Come on.”  
  
They push through the doors into a quiet side corridor just as, twenty meters ahead, the captain falters and catches himself against the wall. McCoy and Spock swiftly move to take his weight, easing him down onto a nearby bench. “Damned vultures,” the doctor grumbles, scanning him with one hand and producing a bottle of water with the other. Kirk accepts the bottle without protest. “And you couldn’t have just asked for a chair? God forbid something wreck up your theatrics.”  
  
“It wasn’t a stunt,” insists Kirk weakly, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall. “It wasn’t for the press, and it wasn’t even just for the tribunal. I just—I need them to really get it. And you—all of you.”  
  
Pavel thinks he understands, but gets confirmation when McCoy notices the trio of junior officers hovering not far away. “No time like the present.”  
  
When Kirk notices them, he instantly straightens, trying to maintain some of the decorum of his rank. Uhura steps forward with a quick shake of her head. “If there’s one thing you’re not, Captain, it’s an actor. We heard you, and we’re with you.”  
  
“I don’t have any more right to that chair than any of you. I turn twenty-seven in three months, I have the Fleet’s biggest set of authority issues, and I almost got all of you killed. I did get some of you killed.”  
  
“We all made the choice to put on the uniform,” Hikaru says. “I didn’t choose the _Enterprise_ the first time, but you’d better believe I will this time if they let me.”  
  
It had taken Pavel a long time to believe that, just maybe, he might fit in with the senior bridge crew of the _Enterprise_. They’re all older than him, and many went through the Academy together, and it’s always seemed more like luck than anything else that he got thrown in with them a year ago. Here, though, standing shoulder to shoulder with the helmsman who has become his best friend and feeling just how much he _matters_ to his captain and the others, he knows he’d sooner cut off an arm than leave this crew.  
  
“As will I,” he promises. “She is ours, and we are hers.”  
  
“Bunch of codependents,” mutters McCoy, but his eyes are approving.  
  
Kirk holds each of their gazes in turn, giving and receiving a personal vow. “Thank you,” he says quietly, clasping trembling hands in his lap. “I never cared about having the respect of anyone in the world until I met Christopher Pike, but I do want yours, and I swear to God I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it.”


	5. Jim

“I’m gonna say this one more time,” Bones declares, standing in the doorway with his arms folded like the disapproving schoolteacher he’s clearly channeling. “I think this is a bad idea.”  
  
“And yet,” Jim says amiably, tugging on his shoes, “I’m still doing it.”  
  
“At least wear a jacket.”  
  
“I will, Bones, _Jesus_.”  
  
“Don’t ‘Bones’ me like it’s ridiculous for me to suspect you of doing something foolhardy. It wouldn’t exactly be out of character. Matter of fact, it’d be precisely _in_ character for you to go out there, lose track of time, and spend hours letting this lousy near-winter weather seep right into you, when your immune system is about as mature as your personality.” The doctor’s scowl fades, becomes less of a caricature of concern and more like actual worry. “And it’s not just that. The memorial site is… it’s intense. There are rumors about family members of victims beating the hell out of the name panels, screaming at the world. And your name and face have headlined more than a few news reports in the last little while. You run into anyone looking for somebody to blame for all this, and hell, if they can’t get to Marcus or Harrison, why not James T. Kirk?”  
  
“That did occur to me.” Jim goes to his closet and pulls out a wool coat to put over his already-thick sweater, just to keep his friend from doing any more mothering. “I can handle anything that could happen in the minute or two before the security response. And it’s not like I don’t see their point.”  
  
He’d said that last part quietly, but Bones is too used to him trying to slip things under the radar that way. “Whose point? The people who hold you responsible for the smoking hole in the middle of the city? We’ve been over this, Jim—”  
  
“Yeah, we have. Me and you, me and Spock, me and Nyota, me and the Admiralty, me and half the psych staff at Medical—we’ve all been over it. And I was telling all of you the truth when I said I don’t really believe I personally got four thousand people killed. Doesn’t mean it never keeps me up at night.”  
  
Bones nods once, looking away. “I get it, kid,” he says simply. “Which is why taking you to the memorial site doesn’t thrill me.”  
  
“It’s also why I need to go.”  
  
“Yeah. You win, as always. Lead on.”  
  
They don’t talk much on the ride over. He’s only been back at his apartment for about a week, and he and Bones have been in each other’s hip pockets for seven more before that. Nine, actually, including the time he spent unconscious. It’s remarkable that they haven’t wanted to throttle each other yet. Well, Jim hasn’t, at least.  
  
The intracity shuttle halts at what used to be called the West Starfleet stop, now renamed Memorial Square. He’s no stranger to remembrances. As a kid he got trotted out to a ceremony at the USS _Kelvin_ plaque every couple of years until he hit fifteen and decided to conveniently disappear whenever his birthday rolled around. A year and change ago, he was a conspicuous attendee at the dedication of the memorial to the _Narada_ victims, just a few blocks from here. He’s somewhat glad to have missed the formal ceremonies this time, because he needs a camera in his face right now like he needs another hole in the head.  
  
It’s quiet, but not peaceful. Scattered visitors stand at the transparent aluminum panels that line the inner square on all sides, reaching eight feet into the air. Many panels are so filled with columns of etched names that they’re nearly opaque. Others are less full, but only because they’re not yet complete. Behind them, work continues to repair the city—or, failing that, to clear the visible devastation.  
  
Open air has never felt so crushing.  
  
The names are presented randomly, Starfleet officers next to other local workers next to unfortunate passersby. All of the victims will be tallied here when the panels are complete, including those who were at Daystrom, and in the Archives, and on the _Enterprise_. All whose lives were ended by Khan, except for two: the one who woke him in the first place—and the one who got his life back.  
  
Jim checks the alphabetized list on the nearby computer kiosk and finds that Christopher Pike’s section has been completed. He goes to the correct panel, expecting to feel no more or less than the same ache of loss and regret that first took up residence in his mind weeks ago. It’s just a name on a wall; it says nothing about the kind of man Pike was, how he saw and felt so much more deeply than anyone Jim has ever known—how boundless his capacity for understanding and doing the right thing…  
  
And damn it, Jim’s eyes are stinging and it hurts to swallow.  
  
He senses Bones behind him, his ever-present sentry. “You don’t have to be ‘the captain’ here, you know,” the doctor points out quietly. “There aren’t any cameras around.”  
  
“I haven’t been ‘the captain’ for a while now.” And might not be again for a long time yet, if ever. “I’ve been nothing but vulnerable ever since I woke up, so if you’re telling me to let my guard down, I don’t even know where my guard is anymore.”  
  
“Bullshit. Your guard has more layers than an onion. And you’re using most of them to avoid grieving for Pike.”  
  
“It’s not like he was my father, Bones.”  
  
His friend steps into his line of sight then, stubborn and steady as ever. “Could’ve fooled me.”  
  
That simple comment is what seals it, what rips his shame out and exposes it to the light. He shuts his eyes. “If it had been me that died at Daystrom, Pike wouldn’t have charged off to Qo’nos for revenge. If he knew what I did in his name…”  
  
“Don’t make him a saint just because he’s gone,” Bones says. “If he knew, would he be ashamed of you? I don’t think so. I think some part of him would be grateful—and, okay, another part would be pissed. But here’s the important thing, Jim: he knew you as well as anyone, and he never quit believing that you could be great, once you figured a few things out. Maybe that figuring took some detours, like the one through that fucking warp core…but God, did you ever prove him right.”  
  
It’s an incredible gift of reassurance, especially from someone whose usual method of counseling involves bourbon. And it’s almost, _almost_ enough. But…everything’s just so twisted now. Jim loves his ship desperately, would do anything for her—obviously—but even if he gets her back, the idea of going back out there and leaving his moral compass somewhere in a Virginia cemetery is more than a little frightening.  
  
“I just wish I could know for sure,” he whispers.  
  
“Don’t we all.”  
  
They stand at the panel in silence for a few minutes.  
  
_I’m sorry I wasn’t always what you thought I could be. I swear I understand much better now. But mostly I understand how much I don’t know._  
  
“Are you… You are.” An accusatory voice, middle-aged and male, breaks into his thoughts. “You have some gall to come here.”  
  
Jim opens his mouth to offer an apology and take his leave, because for once in his life he has no desire whatsoever to provoke anyone. When he turns toward the voice, though, the speaker is facing away from him, glaring at a slim young woman who’s trying and failing to disappear into her hooded coat.  
  
Unfortunately, her name and face are nearly as infamous as Jim’s now, and her role in this debacle has been even less clear to the public.  
  
Carol Marcus bows her head. “I don’t want to cause any trouble or pain—”  
  
“Then you should have done something months ago, before your father signed my daughter’s death warrant.”  
  
Carol nods once, and it seems like more of an admission of guilt than Jim thinks it should be. “Please believe me when I say I wish to God I had.”  
  
“That isn’t nearly good enough.”  
  
“Hey.” Jim’s taking a step forward before he even realizes he wants to move. “She isn’t her father.”  
  
The man’s iron gaze and posture don’t waver. “You really believe she knew _nothing_ about what he was doing?”  
  
He hasn’t thought this through, but that’s never stopped him before. “I believe she knew enough to question, to investigate, and eventually to risk her life trying to stop it. I believe the USS _Enterprise_ would’ve been lost with all hands if she hadn’t personally intervened. I’m truly sorry that your daughter’s gone, and I can’t tell you whether or not she’d still be here if Dr. Marcus had done anything differently, but I know for a fact that _I_ wouldn’t be.”  
  
It takes a few seconds for the implications to sink in. When they do, the man swivels to look at Jim, and his face goes slack. “You’re—”  
  
“That’s right.” Jim spreads his hands. “So if you need someone besides a dead admiral or a three-hundred-year-old psychopath to blame, you’ve found your man. I won’t even put up a fight.”  
  
The grieving father just stares at him, countless instincts and emotions warring on his features, paralyzing him. At least, he simply gives in to the inexplicability of it all and moves away from them, shaking his head.  
  
Carol regards Jim with a guarded expression. “My hero,” she says flatly. It’s clearly not a compliment, but neither does it have much bite.  
  
And once again he finds himself rationalizing his actions after the fact. “I know you could have handled that,” he says. “I just didn’t think you should have to.”  
  
She gives a small nod of acknowledgement, her gaze slipping back toward the endless wall of names.  
  
At Jim’s shoulder, Bones clears his throat. “I’m, ah, gonna go… anywhere that makes this less awkward.” He chucks a thumb toward a coffee shop across the street.  
  
Jim tips his head in thanks, then holds out a hand toward the sidewalk, hoping Carol’s as finished with this place as he is. Silently she falls into step with him.  
  
“It’s good to see you,” he says, and means it. “Your knee healed up all right?”  
  
“Well enough. How’s your _everything_ healing up?”  
  
He cues up his usual shrug. “Radiation poisoning’s a little anticlimactic, it turns out.”  
  
The way her eyes seem to frost over makes him immediately regret the glib response. “I was in sickbay when they brought you in,” she reminds him.  
  
_In a body bag,_ she doesn’t have to add.  
  
“Sorry. Force of habit. I’m doing okay, thanks.” He shoves his hands into his coat pockets. “It’s—it feels weird. So many of my cells had to regenerate—my coordination, muscle memory are off in random little ways. I might trip over my own feet in a minute, so you’ve been warned.”  
  
“Noted,” she says dryly. “I presume that’s why you have a shadow.”  
  
“Bones? Yeah, that’s not the only reason, but it’s the main one.”  
  
For what’s likely the same reason, she steers them toward a bench in the outer part of the memorial square. When spring comes the open field will be green; right now it’s just a half-step above bleak. “He’s quite loyal, isn’t he?”  
  
“He is. I can’t even say ‘Where would I be without him,’ because the obvious and literal answer is ‘nowhere.’” Jim takes a seat, feeling a trace of the ocean in the air that moves through this space, so recently crowded with skyscrapers. “I didn’t see you at the tribunal, did I?”  
  
“They let me testify in a closed-door session, in consideration of my ‘unique situation.’” Carol folds her hands in her lap, as if composure is a default setting. “They were careful not to blame me directly, since they knew that would indict them as much as it would me. Even so, they were very interested in what I knew, what I suspected, what I did or could have done… I can answer for my actions as an officer, but that’s not nearly the sum of it.”  
  
“Seems like if spouses aren’t required to testify against each other, daughters should be exempt, too.”  
  
Apparently that’s the wrong move, because her eyes flash. “So I can protect his memory? Trust me, that is _not_ my foremost concern.”  
  
“I just meant—”  
  
“Please, Captain, let’s neither of us embarrass ourselves. Three different Fleet-assigned counselors have already tied themselves into knots attempting to understand what it’s like to be me right now. Do you really think _you_ can pull it off?”  
  
Jim raises his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to claim to get it completely. But in some small way, I can at least relate to being manipulated by Admiral Marcus.” He weighs a choice about whether or not to continue, then forges ahead. “Also, when it comes to daddy issues, I have a pretty big head start.”  
  
It takes her a moment, but soon Carol’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.”  
  
“I figured. I kinda like that about you.”  
  
“My ability to let self-pity overshadow the concerns of others?”  
  
She’s so quick that his first reaction, a short, bewildered laugh, escapes before he can tamp it down. “I hope you normally give yourself more credit than that. No, I just didn’t get the ‘ _Kelvin_ -kid’ sympathy vibe from you when we met, which is always nice. Then again, I give people multiple options for ways to snap-judge me these days.” He slides his hands back into his pockets; the November chill is starting to seep in. “I’ve spent my entire life feeling like, on one hand, I have to apologize just for existing—to my family, anyway, because I’m here and he isn’t—and on the other hand, I shouldn’t have to apologize for anything ever. I guess I’m hoping that the one good thing I might be able to pull out of all this…whatever it was…would be to finally find a middle ground.”  
  
And she’d thought _she_ sounded self-absorbed? He shakes his head, a little mystified. “I have no idea why I just dumped that on you.”  
  
Her features soften. “Allow me to contribute by assuring you that you certainly don’t need to apologize for _that,_ Captain.”  
  
The use of his rank doesn’t feel right, and not just because he’s still not sure whether or not Command will let him keep it. “I’m not here to be Starfleet,” he says. “I realize we don’t actually know each other very well, but can we try—?” Turning to face her, he attempts a smile. “I’m Jim Kirk. I grew up in Iowa and work in outer space. I have a mom who loves me the best she can and an older brother I can’t figure out how to talk to. For years I used to ride out to the shipyards and watch this massive starship take shape, and I hated it, because I was sure Starfleet had ruined my life before it even started. Then someone gave me a different view, and a lot of absolutely insane shit happened, and now I love that damn ship more than I thought I could love anything in the world. I like to read, I listen to three-hundred-year-old music, I think that new holoseries about the old American West is really underrated, and some days I am seriously envious of anyone on the Science track because your uniforms are much better looking than mine.” He offers a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
After a moment of hesitation, she accepts it.  
  
“I’m Carol Marcus. I grew up in Kent, not far from London. My mother was a medical doctor, and my father was mostly off on ships. He was away when she was killed in a shuttle crash.” Jim hadn’t known that detail, but he wants to let her continue, so he settles for tightening their still-joined hands. “Recently I’ve wondered if that’s when it began, if he started seeing evil all around after she died. If that’s it, it was subtle. He took a promotion back to Earth, and every so often he’d talk about the threats that existed, about how we needed more of our best minds to devote their efforts to defensive technologies. And I wanted to please him, and I liked that he thought I was one of those best minds, so that’s what I did. Then, somewhere between there and here, it all went off the rails.”  
  
She shakes her head, withdrawing her hand and folding her arms tightly around herself. “I suppose that’s how it happens, isn’t it? You follow something a little further each day, and eventually you can’t even see where you started. And all the while, long after I started to doubt, he stayed so very certain that he was right.”  
  
“Up to a point, he was.” Jim’s not at all sure of his footing, but he suspects no one else would dare approach this topic, especially now. “The image we put forward to represent the Federation to the galaxy can’t be a fist. But we _do_ need to be able to defend ourselves. When the technology and the will exist to wipe out entire planets, we can’t just sit back and hope for the best. I’m sure the _Narada_ factored into his thinking over the past year or so.”  
  
Carol gives a nod. “And the thinking of many others, including me. Which is why he was able to accomplish as much as he did. I do understand that weapons are necessary, but I can’t devote my own life to that anymore. Is that hypocritical of me? To recognize a need but be unwilling to use my expertise to fill it?”  
  
“I don’t think so. No one’s obligated to do something just because they’re good at it. Especially since I imagine your nanotech skills could be just as useful in other ways.” He tries not to study her so closely, but she’s intriguing, in a way he’s not used to noticing in a beautiful woman. Granted, he’d appreciated her looks plenty when they first met, probably too much. He knows more and knows better now. The fact that she’s even _functional_ after what she’s been through, let alone able to think clearly and critically about it all, is a shining testament to her strength. “Have you thought about what you’ll do instead?”  
  
“I’m not sure yet. I’ve always had some interest in terraforming, so perhaps I’ll request a transfer over to bioengineering. Maybe. I just know that I need to create rather than destroy. And—I need to not be here for a while. Earth is just…there are too many complications.”  
  
Jim, as he so often does, thinks and speaks at the same time. “I hear there’s a five-year mission starting pretty soon, if you can get through the transfer process.”  
  
She seems surprised. “You’d select me for the _Enterprise?_ ”  
  
“If they select _me,_ you mean? Because I like my chances of that less and less every day that Command runs silent on the topic.” But enough about his hang-ups—God, why are all the things he’s been keeping under lock and key around everyone else suddenly surfacing with her? “But if they do, I’ll keep as much of my crew as I can.”  
  
Looking wistful, she shakes her head. “Except I was never really a member of your crew, was I?”  
  
“The hell you weren’t.” He wants her to be part of this, for reasons that aren’t quite clear in his mind; they’re going out there to do amazing things and she’s a little amazing herself, and therefore she should be with them. “No one’s ever going to understand what happened out there like we do. That alone is almost reason enough for us to stick together. More than that, though… You felt that something was wrong, and there wasn’t an obvious path to fix it, so you made one. And you kept doing whatever it took until it was over. If that isn’t just what Starfleet needs on the five-year, I don’t know what is.”  
  
Surprise and doubt cloud her face, much like they had a few minutes ago when he’d said something similar at the memorial. It’s baffling to him, until some corner of his brain prompts him with the only explanation that makes sense. She has been existing on the periphery for two months, with no significant interactions either professional or personal—and in all that time no one has made the simple effort to tell her she did well.  
  
At last her expression clears into one of gratitude. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “You’re…more than they say you are.”  
  
This time he doesn’t feign ignorance about his reputation. “I’m learning to be.”  
  
His communicator signals, and he pulls it out of his pocket with an apologetic glance.  
  
“Command just put out a press release,” Bones says. “Check your padd.”  
  
Oh, God. This is it. Judgment day.  
  
“I left it at home,” Jim manages to say, despite suddenly having no air in his lungs. Carol, however, has already pulled her own padd from her purse. A small smile that he doesn’t trust himself to interpret crosses her face, and she passes the padd to him.  
  
_Planning underway for unprecedented long-duration exploratory mission…repairs and retrofits to USS Enterprise projected to be complete in July…formal crew assignments pending…_  
  
_…under the command of Captain James T. Kirk._  
  
Relief floods his senses, and he exhales a shaky breath that lands somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Somebody on high still believes in him, because now he has a mission. He has a purpose.  
  
“Congratulations,” Carol says softly.  
  
Jim fumbles for her hand again and grasps it tightly. “July. That gives you eight months to finish your specialty transition. More like six once you add in pre-mission training. Get on it.”  
  
Her eyes are shining. “Aye, Captain.”  
  
Eventually he remembers that his line to Bones is still open and lifts his communicator. “Bones, where the hell are you and where the hell do you get off telling me like that? I don’t know whether to kick your ass or kiss you on the mouth.”  
  
“Blame Starfleet for telling the press before their own officers. Ain’t no way I was gonna let you find out from anyone else, not when I had the chance to watch your face myself.”  
  
Jim jerks his head up. Across the street, his friend stands on the sidewalk, mock-saluting him with a cup of coffee. “Leonard McCoy, you are one sneaky son of a bitch.”  
  
“Have to be to save you from yourself, _Captain._ Now give the lady your comm ID and let’s go home before you catch some obscure juvenile illness.”  
  
“His comm ID, Doctor McCoy?” Carol inquires, eyebrows arched.  
  
“Protocol, Doctor Marcus,” Bones says with slightly-too-dry formality. “I’m taking it on faith that if you haven’t yet been convinced to join our merry band of misfits, you will be soon enough. And there’ll be plenty of prep work to go around once assignments are finalized. You wouldn’t want to make it difficult for your crewmates to reach you, would you?”  
  
With the barest hint of a smile gracing her lips, Carol gives a nod of assent, and Jim types his comm ID into the contact list on her padd. “Use it whenever,” he says, handing the padd back. “Even if it’s just to complain about Fleet red tape or the tabloids or something.”  
  
“Be careful what you wish for,” she says, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “I listen to three-hundred-year-old music too, but my tastes may not be the same as yours.”  
  
Surprised, Jim grins—no, he _smiles_ back. “That sounds like a challenge.”  
  
“What he listens to can only loosely be defined as ‘music,’ Carol.”  
  
“Bones, at any point are you going to acknowledge that I rank you by two grades and, oh, I don’t know, start treating me like an adult in public?”  
  
“Wasn’t planning on it, no.”  
  
The world hasn’t been righted on its axis, but right now this is as close as it could possibly get.


	6. Scotty

Aerodynamic considerations and the effects of terrestrial gravity were not significant factors in the design of the _Constitution_ class of starships. The warp nacelles are positioned to provide thrust on the centerline of the disk-shaped primary hull while maintaining a safe separation from the densely populated primary and secondary hulls. This design, optimized for a zero-gravity environment, can still function in higher gravities, but with limitations.  
  
Hiding it underwater causes structural stresses.  
  
Tumbling into a planet’s upper atmosphere causes structural and thermal stresses.  
  
Getting _fired_ upon by a great bloody secret warship that was supposed to be on _our_ side for Christ Almighty’s sake— _that_ causes every kind of stress imaginable.  
  
It seems reasonable, therefore, that Montgomery Scott would object to bringing his ship back down to the Riverside drydock for repairs. Spacedock would provide a more benign environment for his wounded bairn. However, it would be a _less_ benign environment for the work crews assigned to her. Starfleet had amassed a great deal of experience with major repairs following the disaster at Vulcan, and their safety experts—and bean-counters, most likely—decreed that the _Enterprise_ should return to her birthplace to be made whole again.  
  
The work is going well, all things considered. Shipyard crews are proficient with individual systems and general techniques, but they have no knowledge of the quirks that make the _Enterprise_ unique. When Scotty trudges back to his temp quarters in Riverside each night and passes out across his bed still wearing his coveralls, he has nightmares about some well-meaning electrical tech blithely applying a test voltage to the secondary relay in the shuttle bay, unaware that there’s a sneak circuit in that section that could send a command to slam the hangar doors shut if powered in the wrong sequence. Or any one of a dozen other pitfalls.  
  
He works full shifts and sometimes more, because no one knows his beloved like he does, and because bone-deep fatigue helps to drown out the voices that whisper _too little too late too little too late._  
  
Shift change has come and gone, and he’s just about finished remounting the panel in the environmental control room. The swing shift will complete the job during the evening. With that, oxygen will once again be available on all decks. Granted, if it were employed, much of it would still vent rapidly through the many bulkhead breaches that won’t be mended for a few more weeks—but milestones are milestones, and without those the magnitude of their task would grind them all flat.  
  
Scotty types a couple of notes into the master ECS log before signing himself off-shift. He makes his way out through the massive scaffolds that support and immobilize his ungainly, luminous ship, weighing a choice between leftover shepherd’s pie or a burrito for dinner.  
  
“Scotty.”  
  
The voice gives him a start, coming from somewhere off to the side. He squints down the outer fence of the _Enterprise’_ s berth, his eyes adjusting to the bright clouds of the early winter day. A few meters away, a figure stands at the fence, and it takes Scotty a moment to see past the cowl of the man’s coat, drawn up against the chill.  
  
“Captain!”  
  
He hurries over, then slows, uncertain. They’ve commed and padd-mailed each other a few times over the past month, discussing the repair schedule, but he hasn’t actually seen James Kirk since the captain was transferred to Starfleet Medical shortly after…everything. Which means Kirk hasn’t seen _him_ since—to be blunt—knocking him out cold, saving the day, and dying before his eyes.  
  
It’s a level of awkwardness previously unmatched.  
  
Kirk smiles, and it’s subdued yet genuine. He looks faded, but whole. Older, maybe. “So you do occasionally leave the ship. I was a little afraid you’d set up a sleeping bag in Engineering.”  
  
“Ach, it’s too busy in the powered sections and too bloody cold in the unpowered ones.” Belatedly Scotty notices the offered hand and pumps it readily. “I didna know you were in town, sir.”  
  
“Just got in. I was getting stir-crazy in San Francisco. Lots of briefings and seminars and people trying their best to nose their way into all sorts of less-than-fun topics. Granted, people here are likely to do some staring too, since I’m not exactly a stranger around these parts, but _she’s_ here. So.” He turns his face to look up at the _Enterprise,_ now lit more softly by the twilight pastels glowing through the clouds.  
  
Scotty hesitates. “I’m sorry I didna stay for the full tribunal. The early phase of outer hull stabilization was just getting underway.”  
  
It’s just close enough to the truth that Kirk accepts it easily. “Of course. All you missed was me drinking myself stupid in record time after my testimony. Turns out all that cell regeneration reset my alcohol tolerance along with everything else. One bourbon and I passed out on Bones’s couch. He was pretty pissed at himself for not seeing it coming.”  
  
Scotty hopes his smirk looks at least somewhat sympathetic. “That bad, eh?”  
  
The levity fades from the younger man’s features. “Depends on which newscast you watch. We went after a terrorist and brought him to justice. How we went about it, and how much damage he was able to do in the meantime—those are details no one can seem to agree on, at least not yet.” He shakes his head, dropping his gaze to the ground. “The Admiralty, what’s left of it, thinks I should have recognized the unlawful nature of Marcus’s original orders, and they’re right. Just like you were right. God knows how many people would still be here if I’d listened to you.”  
  
Uncomfortable, Scotty only has one thing to offer. “Just so, sir. Might have been more, but it might have been less. Only God knows.”  
  
Kirk acknowledges with a silent nod, drawing a deep breath. “But they’re giving me a chance to do better. I don’t know if it’s because the pool of available command crew took such a big hit or because they actually believe in me, but we’re getting the five-year mission. In the first two weeks after that announcement, I got over two thousand applications. Two thousand, for just over four hundred slots, because we can’t take a max capacity crew on this one like we could on the three-month shakedowns. Obviously I’m going to lean on the department heads to make a lot of the personnel decisions, but to do that I have to formally select the department heads.”  
  
What’s coming next is clear and painful and Scotty has no choice but to stand there and face it.  
  
Turning squarely toward him, Kirk continues, “So what do I need to do to get an application from _you?_ ”  
  
Not exactly how he’d expected it to be phrased, but Scotty winces all the same. It’s all been rolling around in his head for weeks, and he’s no closer to piecing it together. So he dodges. “With so much going on, I just haven’t been able to sit down and write it.”  
  
“You mean you haven’t been able to _decide_ to write it.” The captain doesn’t look indignant or disappointed; more…worried. “Because you know you could submit a recipe for haggis as your application and I’d still approve it.”  
  
In fact Scotty _hadn’t_ known that, and hearing it puts him off his guard. “You’re prepared to take on a five-year mission with someone who walked out on you and your ship rather than follow your order?”  
  
“It wasn’t an order I had any right to give. That bastard had just killed Chris Pike and blown me up and Marcus said—” Kirk cuts himself off with a quick shake of his head. “I was wrong. I know that now, and if I’ve learned anything out of all this, it’s that I can’t just let my instincts steamroll the opinions of people I trust. Look, Scotty, I can’t promise I’ll never do anything stupid or overrule anyone ever again. But I do promise that I won’t ignore anything you have to say. Please tell me you can live with that, because I’ve got no chance of getting through five years in deep space without the Fleet’s best engineer—and because I’m going to need all the wise counsel I can get.”  
  
It’s amazingly earnest and probably the most self-aware thing Scotty has ever heard Jim Kirk say. And because he’d already half forgiven the man the moment he skidded to a stop in the _Vengeance’_ s shuttle bay, he’s now left with only his own recriminations to reckon with.  
  
“I could have blinked and gone along anyway,” he says, looking at the ground. “You called my bluff and my pride wouldna let me take it back, when I might have been able to figure out what was going on with those torpedoes earlier if I’d just _been_ there.”  
  
“And then what? How would we have gotten on board the _Vengeance?_ This stuff can’t be dissected like that, Scotty. Any one of five million things could have gone differently in some miniscule way, and we might have ended up someplace else entirely.”  
  
“All the same, sir. I stand by my convictions, but I can’t help but think that my place was with my ship.”  
  
“Then stay with your ship now.” Kirk’s blue eyes are ablaze, challenging him. “If you wish you’d done something different, then take another run at it knowing what you know now. Because I swear to God that’s the only concept that’s keeping _me_ sane, so you might as well give it a shot too.”  
  
It makes as much sense as anything Scotty can think of, and as a bonus it allows him to keep the _Enterprise_. This time he’s the one who offers his hand, and it’s thankfully accepted. “Haggis, you say?”  
  
“Hyperbole. If you actually did that with your application and somehow Spock got that one to review instead of me, he might lose his vegetarian lunch.” Kirk’s grin morphs from wicked to almost shy. “So. Can I go see our ship, or what?”  
  
Even though he’s been aboard for ten solid hours today, the question is music to Scotty’s ears. “With pleasure, sir.”  
  
They walk nearly every accessible corridor of the secondary hull, and Scotty narrates the tasks completed and the ones remaining to be done. Kirk interrupts periodically with questions about tensile loading and high-cycle fatigue that remind his companion he would have made a fine engineer himself. Possibly not one capable of keeping the _Enterprise_ running near-singlehandedly, but fine nonetheless.  
  
When they come to deck nineteen, the captain slows his pace. The structural repairs are partially complete, but the still-visible gash extends to the decks both above and below.  
  
“This is where we lost the most, isn’t it?”  
  
Scotty gives a tight nod. “Aye. Eleven.”  
  
For a long moment, Kirk stands at the rail, eyes closed, leaning out just far enough to exist in the empty space that extends down for three decks. Trying to feel what his crewmen felt in those last seconds, maybe—but then he’d already know the feeling better than most.  
  
When he opens his eyes, he says, “We should put up a marker here. Nothing big—I don’t want everyone to be constantly haunted by it. But it shouldn’t be just another hallway.”  
  
“I’ll take care of it.” Scotty hesitates, but he certainly doesn’t want to get into the habit of dancing around sensitive topics. “Jim, you understand...five years in uncharted space means we _will_ lose more. It’s not a matter of if but when.”  
  
“I know. And I’ll hate it, and odds are good that I’ll be an asshole about it to other people who hate it just as much, because there are some things I’m still complete crap at. And then we’ll fumble through it and we’ll work together and we’ll learn so, so much. I swear, Scotty, I want so badly to be good at this. I can’t even stand to think about it going any other way.”  
  
“Sounds like as good a reason as any why you _will_ be good at it.” Scotty offers a shrug. “Beating the universe into submission, that’s you in a nutshell.”  
  
Kirk’s mouth curves upward. “I’ve been called a lot worse.” He pushes off the railing and squares his shoulders. “Speaking of things I’m going to hate, there’s one more place I need to go.”  
  
Scotty’s not going to enjoy this any more than his captain will. “The core won’t be repaired for weeks yet. They’ve barely begun disassembly.”  
  
“All the more reason for me to get this over with now, before it’s powered back up. I can’t run this ship if I’m avoiding the biggest subsection in Engineering.”  
  
It’s a long trip with the turbolifts out of commission, and they make it mostly in silence, passing only three or four workers on the way. Scotty lets Kirk set the pace and doesn’t comment when his steps get incrementally smaller as they approach Main Engineering. “I’ve never been aboard with her in min-power state before,” Kirk says in a nearly conversational tone. “Too quiet, too empty. Creeps me out.”  
  
“Aye. She’s meant to be more lively than this.”  
  
“She will be soon.” He draws in a steadying breath, exhales it forcefully, and steps through the doorway.  
  
The warp core chamber is silent, dark. It feels like a tomb, and for fourteen minutes last summer it was this man’s tomb—and yet here he stands, one hand on the glass. Does he realize he’s mirroring a motion he made then, as his body began to fail? Does he remember the ending of his life?  
  
His words, soft and uncertain, provide the answer. “When it happened…my eyes were kind of messed up, so I couldn’t see much beyond Spock… Were you there?”  
  
Glad to be standing a few steps behind him, Scotty swallows painfully. “The core coming back online is what brought me around. That’s when I called Mr. Spock.”  
  
“Thank you.” Kirk turns, his voice solemn. “For calling him. People don’t usually get to look back at…that, and it’s beyond weird that I’m even talking about it, but…it really mattered, having someone there, and I’m really, really grateful. Especially after the mess I left for you, going in there the way I did.”  
  
“I should get to deck you back,” Scotty says without forethought, eliciting a wry laugh.  
  
“I’ll let you. Just not yet, because Bones’ll kick your ass.” Kirk shakes his head. “I’m not sorry I did it, but I am sorry you had to be a witness.”  
  
Scotty prefers to have a drink or five before this sort of conversation, but there’s no going back at this point. “I’ve tried not to think about what I would have done if you hadn’t taken the choice out of my hands. I’m…I’m terrified I won’t like the answer.”  
  
“Don’t you start putting yourself down based on what-ifs. Nobody else could have done even half of what you did to get us home. You’ve got guts to spare, Montgomery fucking Scott, and I never want to hear you say otherwise.” Very much in command mode, Kirk stares him down for a few seconds. Eventually he must be satisfied with what he sees, because he turns slightly back toward the core. His eyes fall on the floor of the chamber, and he blanches. “God, that’s my blood, isn’t it. I didn’t even know I bled.”  
  
Flashes of memory ping across Scotty’s brain, riding a swell of nausea. “Our only priority at the time was getting you out once the decon cycle finished. Cleaning up wasn’t… I couldna ask the crew to do it, and I couldna bear any more myself.”  
  
When he looks up, shock and horror have flayed the captain’s features wide open. “ _You_ had to get me out,” he breathes. “I didn’t—I never thought about…”  
  
Scotty’s voice is wrecked and he can’t muster the energy to be embarrassed about it. “I thought it was the last thing I’d ever be able to do for you.”  
  
“ _Jesus,_ Scotty.” Right now Jim Kirk looks so very young. He _is_ so very young, and no matter how much he’s experienced, the universe keeps finding ways to test him anew. He trembles, violently, and leans back on the glass, sliding down until he sits hard on the deck. “Was your life normal before I came along?”  
  
“Not as such,” Scotty admits, sinking down to sit beside his friend. “You’ll recall there was a reason Starfleet stuck me on Delta Vega. Before that, though… more or less normal, I suppose.”  
  
“I’ve never been within shouting range of normal. I don’t have the first clue what it would be like.”  
  
“It’s not so wonderful, really.”  
  
Kirk’s laugh teeters on the edge of hysteria. He looks at Scotty with bright, liquid eyes begging for answers. “Should I be here?” he whispers.  
  
If only there were answers to go around. His own eyes burning, Scotty says helplessly, “Should any of us?”  
  
Blindly, Kirk flings out a hand and Scotty grips it tightly, each man drawing whatever strength he can from the knowledge that life is incomprehensibly strange and hard but at least no one else seems to understand it any better than he does.  
  
He has no idea how long they sit there. It’s a while, to be sure. Eventually Kirk lifts his head and, somehow, looks like The Captain again. “Okay.”  
  
The shift is abrupt enough to give Scotty whiplash. “Okay? Just like that?”  
  
Kirk snorts. “Not ‘okay’ as in everything’s fine. Just ‘okay’ as in I’ll be able to come down here next time without losing it. That’s good enough for now, isn’t it?”  
  
“Aye, that it is.”  
  
Kirk claps him on the shoulder and climbs to his feet. “Let’s go get a drink. Possibly some food, but definitely a drink.”  
  
Which sounds appealing on a number of levels, but he’s obligated to protest. “I have an early morning tomorrow.”  
  
“Like you haven’t been working overtime every other day this week. Come have a drink with us.”  
  
“Us?”  
  
“Yes, us.”  
  
It’s déjà vu when they reach the middeck hatch, step out into the frosty dusk, and hear familiar voices waiting beyond the scaffolds.  
  
“Thanks for planning the schedule so well here,” McCoy grouses, shoulders hunched against the chill. “I really wanted to acclimate to a Midwest winter.”  
  
Uhura rolls her eyes at him as Kirk shrugs, unrepentant. “I’ll be sure to time my existential crises better next time.”  
  
“This is not cold,” objects Chekov, who, sure enough, is not even wearing a bloody coat. “In my hometown this would be May.”  
  
“In your hometown the faucets run hot and cold vodka to help deal with the weather,” Sulu points out. “And on that topic, can we head to the Shipyard now or what?”  
  
Scotty shakes his head, falling into step with his crewmates as they walk toward the bar at the perimeter of the drydock. He doesn’t question why they’re here. Of course they’re here. Well, Spock isn’t, but they are going to a bar, after all, so—  
  
“I see my lateness did not inconvenience you,” Spock greets them at the entrance. “I was delayed at Headquarters and had to wait for a later transport.”  
  
“You’re right on time.” Kirk beams at him and leads them all through the door.  
  
It hasn’t changed, the Shipyard, not in the dozen or so years since Scotty first worked on a starship here. The officers and cadets inside have, though, a bit. They’re not all bright-eyed and straining for adventure anymore. What’s happened over the last year or so has made it painfully clear that there’s more out there than adventure. But the sense of purpose—that remains, strong as ever.  
  
The group gets a few long glances and double takes as they all make their serpentine way through the room, as well as a few nods and subtle glass salutes. They pile into a corner booth, which apparently has been reserved for them, and a round of Andorian ales materializes nearly immediately. Without a word, everyone looks to the captain for a cue.  
  
Kirk turns his glass in his hand for a moment, contemplating. At last, without looking up, he says, “To those we lost. To always trying to do and be better. And to the next five years.”  
  
“Cheers,” says McCoy quietly, and glasses clink.  
  
Scotty looks around at his dearest mates, with his beloved ship just beyond the wall and nothing but possibilities ahead, and knows he’s never belonged anywhere the way he belongs right here and now.

 

*** THE END ***


End file.
